Dating is Part of Family Life

If the man you love has other women in his life, as pals or even an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend, you may find yourself feeling jealous and angry about his relationships with them. You aren’t alone. Many women are faced with this same challenge in their relationships.

There are many different reasons that the jealousy monster can rear its ugly head. Reasons can be real - like your boyfriend or husband cheating on you or being obvious about checking some other girl out. But jealousy can also arise from occurrences that do not actually happen - like you seeing him talking to another woman and imagining all sorts of bad things.

No matter how it happens, jealousy is not fun. Whether your jealousy is reasonable or not, it makes you FEEL all kinds of negative emotions, like hurt, anger, resentment - even reproach and disgust.

Let’s look at two types of jealousy - founded and unfounded. Jealousy that is reasonable would be when your boyfriend or husband has cheated on you. Jealousy that is NOT reasonable is getting mad about him mentioning his ex-girlfriend, or running into her in the store.

The reasonable kind of jealousy - for you - is a sign that something is not right in your relationship. When you feel jealousy over him cheating on you - that is of course completely normal. But what it is screaming at you is that you have something HUGE in your relationship that you and your beau need to work on with each other. If he won’t work on it WITH you - then you need to walk away.

What your emotions are telling you that you may not understand at that point is that he is making you feel like a second class citizen in your relationship. This lack of balance is difficult to deal with, and if it is not corrected, will lead to a lopsided relationship - where perhaps you are doing all the giving or all the taking. Those relationships don’t last.

The imaginary situation or past occurrence is what leads to the second type of jealousy. Let’s say you are jealous because your man ran into his old girlfriend at the mall the other day. Everyone has a past. Everyone had relationships with someone other than you at some point in their life. That is no cause for a negative reaction on your part, and will only hurt your relationship and show him that he cannot trust YOU when he tells you things.

If you become jealous over small things like this - then what your emotions are telling you is that you are afraid and insecure. This is not in any way HIS fault. This is something YOU need to work on with yourself. Take some time and really reach inside yourself and figure out what is causing the fear you have.

Sometimes, women even get jealous about things that have not even occurred. Say for instance you see your man talking to a co-worker at a party and they are laughing and having a good time. This is another emotional response to fear and insecurity. You need to look at what HE is doing and tell yourself, “It IS what it IS. Nothing.”

When jealousy is founded in legitimate emotion - it means that something needs corrected quickly within your relationship. If you are becoming jealous over insignificant things, then you need to do a self-check, and correct the things within yourself that are out of balance.